Heartless

by Mary Balogh

  There would be no pain. Oh, dear God, there would be no pain. And it was not a little pain for a few moments only. It was sharp and searing pain and it blistered the soul for a lifetime.

  “Yes, your grace,” she whispered.

  “Luke,” he said. “My name is Lucas, though only my mother has ever called me that.”

  “Luke,” she whispered.

  He blew out the candles after she had lain down on the bed, moving over to one side to make room for him. He joined her there after a few seconds and she realized almost before he touched her that he was naked.

  One arm slid beneath her neck while the other hand turned her onto her side, facing him, and then cupped her cheek. And he kissed her, his lips warm and firm against her own. His hand moved downward again and behind her waist and lower to draw her against him. Loosely. Unthreateningly. She felt his man’s powerful body, warm and naked, only the thin lawn of her nightgown separating them.

  His mouth moved an inch back from hers. “Anna,” he said, “every muscle is tense. Relax, my dear. There is no hurry. We have all night. We have a lifetime. I will give you time to accustom yourself to the feel of me. I will not enter you until you are ready. Come, you will find it not such an ordeal after all.”

  Don’t delay. Do it now. Get it over with. Do it now. Her mind screamed at him. Her body tried to obey his command.

  He kissed with parted lips. He kissed all parts of her face and her throat. His hands moved lightly, unthreateningly, over her back, both above and below her waist. And then one hand touched her stomach and the side of her hip and waist. And then her breasts, circling them so lightly that he scarcely seemed to touch her at all.

  By the time he opened the buttons of her nightgown her eyes were closed but not clenched, her lips were parted, and her body rested against his from the hips down. And she waited for him to touch her again, there, where it had felt so good. On her breasts.

  It felt doubly good to feel his hand against her flesh, first circling lightly as before and then massaging almost as lightly and then brushing with his thumb against a nipple, causing a rush of tightness there and a stabbing of pain that was not really pain at all.

  She could hear whimpering sounds but paid them no attention. She could feel against her lower abdomen his growing hardness and she pressed closer against it. He made a sound of appreciation in his throat.

  And then he lifted himself onto one elbow and turned her onto her back and was lowering her unbuttoned nightgown over her shoulders and down her arms.

  “Let us dispense with this, Anna,” he said, his face bending close to hers again. “’Tis a mere encumbrance, is it not?”

  She lifted her hips obediently as he stripped the garment away from her and tossed it over the side of the bed. She had been jolted back into herself again. It was time. She knew it was time. She was on her back. And she had relaxed for him. And she had felt his readiness.

  He kissed her again, warmly, almost languidly, open mouthed. His palm moved over her breasts again and down to lie flat on her stomach—or on her womb, she supposed—for a few moments more.

  And then he moved across her and his whole weight was on her. He kissed her again and murmured words whose sense her mind could not unscramble while his knees spread her leg wide and his hands came firmly beneath her buttocks to hold her steady.

  She drew breath in and held it as she felt his hardness against her and coming into her—coming in where there was no barrier and would be no pain—slowly and inexorably coming inward.

  He was deep, her mind told her when he finally stopped coming. Far deeper, far harder than she had ever imagined. She felt stretched wide. Man. For the first time in her life her body was possessed by a man. By him—by Luke. She saw him just behind her closed eyelids gorgeous in scarlet and gold, with his rouged and powdered cheeks and his powdered hair, his gold and ivory fan cooling his face, his gray eyes steady on her. And now she felt him, naked against her own nakedness, deep in the intimacy of the ultimate embrace.

  Despite herself she reveled in the feel of him there as she waited for the end. And she was not sorry after all. For this moment in time she was not sorry. For this moment—for this one moment—she felt like a woman.

  He lay deep and still in her for a long while before he broke the silence. When he did, speaking quietly against her ear, it seemed to her that his voice was without expression. Though she could not in reality tell what his voice sounded like.

  “Let yourself relax,” he said.

  It was only then she realized that every muscle in her body had tightened again and that she was still holding her breath. She obeyed him.

  He withdrew from her slowly so that her heart died a little in her and she almost cried out in anguish. But he paused at the entrance to her and thrust deeply inside again. And repeated the action again and yet again. She remembered suddenly what her godmother had told her, though the reality bore little resemblance to what she had imagined from the verbal description. The reality was far more . . . physical. Thrust and withdrawal became steady and rhythmic and were soon being performed against the unexpected comfort of wetness so that sound and movement became together part of a dance into which her own body gradually relaxed and then responded.

  He was completing the marriage act with her, her mind told her while her body opened and yielded to him and shared his rhythm and followed his pace.

  Pleasure sighed out of her a moment before he held deep in her and she felt heat gush at her core. The marriage act was completed. Her womb was receiving his seed.

  Anna felt tears hot against her eyelids.

  Perhaps, she thought as his relaxed weight bore down on her and she turned her head to rest her cheek against his damp shoulder, he had not noticed. Perhaps it had not been so obvious after all.

  He drew himself out of her body, leaving her feeling bereft for a moment, lifted himself off her, and lay at her side. She closed her legs and then lay still. She wanted to turn onto her side. She wanted to pull up the bedclothes, feeling chilly now that the blanket of his warm body had been removed from hers. But she lay still, afraid for some reason to move. She could make herself comfortable after he had gone back to his own room. She willed him not to say anything before he did so.

  She was on the brink of sleep when she felt the warmth of bedclothes being lifted over her and settled about her shoulders. She turned onto her side, facing him, relaxing into the warmth of the blankets and of his body heat, though she did not touch him or he her, and let herself slip all the way into the luxury of sleep.

  • • •

  He never slept with women. For that reason he conducted his liaisons almost exclusively in the afternoons—as well as for the reason that he liked to see the women to whom he made love. He liked to make love twice, sometimes three times, merely relaxing between times and then taking his leave when his body and the woman’s were sated. Sleep seemed to him one of the most private of activities. He liked to do it alone.

  But he awoke, feeling disoriented, to find that he had fallen asleep in his wife’s bed. He could hear her deep, quiet breathing. He could feel the heat of her down his left side, though they were not touching. He was surprised that he had slept. He turned over onto his back and rested an arm across his eyes. He should be angry, he thought. Was he? It seemed somehow foolish to be angry. She was, after all, five-and-twenty. Disappointed, then? Yes, definitely that. He could remember feeling enchanted by her vivacity and her innocent charm. He could remember feeling just today—or yesterday, he supposed it was—that perhaps life gave second chances once in a while. A second chance for innocence . . . and peace.

  Well. And maybe life did give such chances. But not to him.

  He thought of his unpardonable foolishness in allowing himself to fall in love and to begin to trust. His heart—and his eyes—were cold as he stared upward. His teeth were clamped together, his jaw har
d.

  He had intended to have her only once tonight. The combined shock of performing such an intimate and unfamiliar act and pain at having had a sealed physical passage newly ripped open would be enough for her to cope with for one night, he had thought. He would not take her again until tomorrow night and even then perhaps only once and gently.

  Well, there was no reason now to deny himself. And her body was as beautiful and as inviting without her clothes—though he had experienced it only through the senses of touch and taste and smell and not of sight—as it was with. She was his wife. He was entitled to have her whenever he wanted her and however he wanted her. He wanted her now.

  Despite his denials, the anger came. And, still denied, the hurt. And the unrecognized need to hurt back.

  He set a hand on her shoulder and turned her onto her back, moving with her. He spread her legs wide with his own, lifted her with his hands, and mounted her with one firm stroke. She came awake with a little cry and her legs slid up beside his until her feet were flat on the bed beside his upper thighs.

  Making love had always been a shared experience of give and take, a taking of pleasure and a giving according to the sensed needs of his partner. It was a matter of pride with him never to leave his bed partner unsatisfied. He knew that he had acquired some fame in France as a skilled and considerate lover. But this encounter was all take. He drove his anger and his hurt and his need into her for several long minutes before the blessed release came. He was surprised by her cry, which came almost simultaneously. A cry of sexual satisfaction.

  He felt instantly guilty. But he hated feeling guilt. He hated feeling any strong emotion. He lifted his face from her hair—the long, almost blond, wavy hair that had excited him when he had first seen it without its careful curls and powder—and set his mouth to hers, kissing her softly and with mute unrecognized apology. Her arms came about his shoulders and held him warmly. Her legs slid down the bed so that he could feel their slimness against the length of his.

  He stayed in her bed all night. He had her once more in the darkness and once in the dim light of early dawn when he raised himself on his forearms to look down at her and at what he did with her.

  She was still sleeping when he left her bed and her room in order to take his morning ride in the chill of drizzling rain.

  9

  ANNA knew as soon as she awoke that she was alone and that she was far later than usual getting up. It did not matter. It was the morning after her wedding day, the morning after her wedding night. She would not be expected to rise early. The servants might wonder what was wrong if she did. She smiled at the thought.

  She stretched luxuriously beneath the warm bedclothes, feeling their unfamiliar softness against her body. She had never slept naked before. It somehow felt good though she felt a moment’s embarrassment to realize that her maid must already have been in the room—there was a cup of chocolate covered with a grayish film beside the bed—and must have seen her nightgown tossed onto the floor.

  It did not matter. At least the word would be spread belowstairs that the Duke of Harndon had indeed slept with his new duchess.

  All her fears had been for nothing, she thought. Well, all her immediate fears, anyway. There were others that she would not think of any longer. If and when Sir Lovatt Blaydon returned to England, he would find that she had defied him. He would find her a married lady. Perhaps he would admit defeat, perhaps not. But she was not going to worry about it any longer.

  It had not been obvious after all. He had not noticed. He had made love to her four times. Anna laughed out loud. She had had no idea it could be done more than once in a night, as if there were some law. He wanted her. He loved her. She had known that before their marriage, but terror had destroyed some of the wonder of it for her. No longer. He had made love to her four times, and the fourth time the room had been almost light and he had raised himself on his forearms and deliberately looked at her. She had felt embarrassment for a moment, but he had been inside her and loving her. She had known that she was beautiful to him. She had felt beautiful. And so she had let her eyes roam over him, over the powerful muscles of his dark-haired chest and shoulders and arms, and downward. She had watched what he did to her.

  Anna stretched again. This morning she felt like a woman. No, that was not quite it. She always felt like a woman. This morning she felt like a married woman, something that even three or four years ago she had given up hope of ever feeling, something that for two years she had considered an impossibility. She had reconciled her mind—or tried to do so—to the fact that she would live her life as a spinster. That she would never know a man.

  Yet now she had known a man and had been known by him—in the biblical sense. And her body knew it this morning. Her breasts felt sensitive and sore-tipped. Her legs were stiff from having been pressed wide for long minutes at a time. There was a soreness inside where he had loved her. And there was an overall feeling of—of being known.

  He would do it again tonight, she thought with a quickening of her breath. And tomorrow night and the next. He would do it regularly for perhaps the rest of her life, only abstaining for a few days each month and when . . . She rolled onto her side. Four times. He had performed the marriage act with her four times last night. Perhaps she was already with child. Something somersaulted inside her at the wonder of the thought. Every time he made love to her, her body would be filled with his seed. She was his wife. She was his wife forever and ever.

  She bit her upper lip suddenly and laughed again at the tears that were trickling diagonally down her cheeks. She had not known that happiness could feel like an agony. She felt so happy this morning that it hurt. She wanted to see him again. She wanted to see his eyes. She wanted to see the awareness in them that she was his wife and that they had shared the intimacies of marriage for a whole night.

  Anna threw back the bedclothes and reached for the bellpull.

  He was not in the breakfast room, of course. He must have eaten hours ago. He had probably taken himself off to his club or wherever else gentlemen went during the day. She hoped he would come home before evening. Perhaps he would since it was the day after his wedding day. Anna filled a plate from the warming trays on the sideboard and sat down to eat, determined to enjoy the day even if she must do so alone.

  But she was not long alone. Luke joined her there a few minutes later, looking immaculate and gorgeous in a dark red silk morning gown worn over his shirt and knee breeches. His hair was carefully rolled at the sides and bagged at the back and powdered. The dress was informal, she thought, but the effect was not. He bowed over her hand and raised it to his lips before seating himself and indicating to the butler with the raising of just one forefinger that he would take coffee.

  Anna gazed at him, her body pulsing with the awareness of what he had done to her during the night and of how he felt and looked without his clothes. She smiled warmly at him.

  “Have you been up for hours?” she asked. “I was ashamed to see how far advanced the morning was when I awoke.”

  “I always rise early,” he said. “I like to ride before there are any crowds abroad to slow me down. But you must sleep as long as you wish in the mornings, my dear. This morning you had every reason for doing so.”

  She could feel herself blush but did not care that he saw it also. She held her smile. Early-morning rides had always been her habit too. It had been the only time of day she had felt belonged to her alone. Since coming to London, she had neglected the exercise. Perhaps she would suggest riding with him one morning. Would he mind? But she was his wife and he loved her. Of course he would not mind.

  “Your food will be getting cold,” he said, indicating her plate.

  She turned her attention back to it while he amused her with an account of an unfortunate maid in Hyde Park this morning who had been walking five dogs on leashes. All had been sedate dignity until he had come riding by. Anna smiled
and chuckled at his graphic description of how each dog had reacted and of how the maid had responded. Luke, it seemed, had had to ride back and dismount in order to restore order and harmony among the excited canines and to free the maid from imprisonment by five tangled leashes.

  He talked on lightly, amusingly, until Anna had finished her breakfast. Then he drew back her chair and offered his arm for her to take.

  “We will go to the library, my dear,” he said.

  He was going to spend the day with her. She knew she could not expect it every day. Doubtless it would be undesirable for them to be always together. But today was special. Today was the day after their wedding night. She linked her arm through his instead of laying it more formally on top and smiled at him.

  “’Tis your own special sanctuary?” she asked.

  “’Tis the room from which I do business,” he said.

  Business. There must be letters to write and domestic and financial matters to discuss. Mundane matters that would bind them together more closely as man and wife. Yes, it was how today should be spent.

  He seated her on a leather chair at one side of a great oak desk and walked around it to take the more imposing chair on the other side. He sat down and looked at her. And she knew in that instant, before he spoke, that she had been wrong—wrong about everything.

  “I believe, madam,” he said, his voice almost frighteningly quiet, “that you have some explaining to do.”

  She felt the remnants of her smile drain away as she stared back at him. She had not fooled him after all. He had known, just as Sir Lovatt had warned her that any man would know.

  “It seems to be a generally acknowledged truth,” he said, “that a man has a right to a virgin bride. It may seem a little unfair since a woman does not have the same rights in a bridegroom. But such is the nature of our world and our society. You did not come to me untouched, madam.”